


Locked Out, Pie with Mrs. Weaver

by JustLookFrightenedAndScuttle



Series: Locked Out [8]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 07:07:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17320310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustLookFrightenedAndScuttle/pseuds/JustLookFrightenedAndScuttle
Summary: Takes place after Eric helps Mrs. Weaver with a pie inChapter 9of Locked Out





	Locked Out, Pie with Mrs. Weaver

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place after Eric helps Mrs. Weaver with a pie in [Chapter 9](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15807630/chapters/39308524) of Locked Out

Linda Weaver looked at the pie on her counter and thought about cutting a slice for breakfast.

It was supposed to be for her book club that evening, but she could buy something to take there. They would never know what they were missing.

This pie would be good. It would probably be one of the best she’d ever had -- certainly one of the best she’d had a hand in making. But it was so pretty, it seemed a pity to keep it all for herself. If she took it tonight, she could bask in the compliments she knew the pie would get.

After all the work she put in last night, she would deserve them, at least a little. She’d gone to the farmer’s market for the blackberries, and she’d made the dough for the crust not once, but twice. The first time on her own, the second with Eric.

She was going to be sad to see her young lodger go, she realized. Even if he was hardly every there, and when he was, he mostly kept to his room.

She hadn’t been sure about renting the extra bedroom out. Louis had said they needed more money with both of them retired now, and it had been fine when Joseph was there.

But Joseph was her nephew, her sister Lorraine’s boy, staying with them to save money while he studied at Rhode Island College. He’d lived with his aunt and uncle the last three years, the $150 a month he paid barely covering the increase in their grocery bills.

That hadn’t mattered to to Linda. What mattered was that they could offer a haven for Joseph, who very much did not want to go back home to Springfield. It hadn’t taken long at all for Linda to figure out her nephew was gay. Or that the boy he kept spending time with was a boyfriend rather than a friend. The care he took with his hair and clothes before meeting the boy was clue enough.

Nathan was smaller than Joseph, brunette to Joseph’s blond, always neatly dressed. He never stayed overnight, which she appreciated. It would have been awkward to tell Joseph that one of them would have to sleep on the couch. She knew young people these days slept together before they were married, but she was not going to countenance it under her roof, no matter whether they were gay or straight.

Eric wasn’t Joseph, of course, and not being a relative, his rent was $200 a month and did not include meals. Although the guest bathroom was basically all his. He was small and neat, like Nathan, but he brought that horrid hockey bag and often got up early to run before work, saying he had to stay in condition for the season.

She wasn’t sure why she stipulated that he could only have one shelf of the refrigerator and use of the microwave. Joseph had never really cooked at all, beyond maybe putting together a sandwich. She honestly hadn’t realized it would be much of an issue for a college boy, and she had a hard time believing that a college boy could meet her exacting standards when it came to cleaning up.

She eyed the pie again. That had definitely been a misjudgment on her part.

Even when he brought her that first blueberry pie with its fancy braided lattice, she hadn’t really believed it. She would have thought he bought it from a frou-frou bakery somewhere if it wasn’t in a well-worn metal pie plate -- a plate he asked to be returned as soon as she was done with it.

More likely, she had believed, was that he had a girlfriend here in Providence. That would explain his desire to take a job here for the summer, and his need to find a place. If the girl was living with her family, he couldn’t expect to stay there.

Eric hadn’t raised a fuss, just said he’d be able to bake at his friend’s place. Then, over the first few weeks, he steadily spent more and more time away from home, always staying with unnamed friends.

So she figured she was wrong about the girl living with her family. Maybe she had roommates who had taken to Eric?

For a couple of weeks, she almost expected Eric to give notice. It wouldn’t have mattered much; he was only staying two and a half months, and by that time, it was only July’s rent that was yet to be paid.

Then he told them he was going home for the week of Fourth of July to visit his parents, and she was reminded of their talk the day he took the room. He’d asked if he could give their phone number to his mother, and whether he could give his parents’ number to her as an emergency contact.

He’d mumbled and seemed embarrassed by his mother’s concern, but Linda Weaver thought it was sweet. But that concern -- and the potential for his parents to contact her -- might explain why he didn’t move out completely.

Well, that and the fact that she’d only seen Eric in the company of a girl once, and that was after he came back from Georgia. She had seen him get picked up and dropped off several times by a young man with dark hair and a lovely car. Eric had said something about playing hockey with him -- although after a time, he stopped bringing his gear bag home.

That was the man who brought Eric back to the house when he came back from Georgia. Linda had been making cookies, trying to figure out the timing. She offered some to Eric on his way through the kitchen, but he said no, unlike any young man of his age that she ever knew.

She’d been slightly insulted.

But then he came home when she working on his pie, and he just kind of took over. He helped clean the mess from the first batch of dough, added some orange zest to the filling, and then walked her step-by-step through the crust, as though she was a beginner and he was the expert, for all she had nearly 50 years on him. And bless her if it didn’t work beautifully.

Then, when she explained that she wanted the pie for her book club, he offered to make a lattice top, similar to the one he’d made for her at the beginning of the summer.

While they worked, she apologized for her original ban on the kitchen. She was pretty sure Eric accepted her apology, although he didn’t say so in so many words.

He did, with a little prodding, acknowledge that the friend whose kitchen he used was actually a boyfriend, one who wasn’t out, and Eric was worrying that their relationship would hurt his partner.

But young people today were so much better about that than they were in her day, or even Lorraine’s, for all she was a dozen years younger. She’d seen for herself that Joseph and Nathan had a passel of friends, and gone on to find good jobs in Boston after they graduated and moved in together. Even if Lorraine thought they were simply roommates.

So when she asked if Eric had brought his worries up to his boyfriend, and he said the boyfriend told him it would be alright, she advised him to listen. She hoped that was the right thing to say.

Well, Eric would be gone soon enough. And so would this pie. Taking one slender slice wouldn’t hurt much; maybe it would make it easier for people to cut into into it at the meeting.

She lifted her knife to make the first cut.


End file.
